Our privacy is attacked again, so is our data safe?

More frequency it’s being reported on the news that a large corporation company has been attacked and consumer’s details are being released.

So how safe is our information on the web?

Companies implement many stress testing and contingency plans for the public prior to being released into the public domain. But really should it become a cause of concern that all our data which we are told is safe is in fact insecure.

Yahoo are the latest to report that they have reasons to believe that they have been hacked by the same hacker who is linked to the mega-breach attack of Myspace and LinkedIn for consumer information. It’s believed that around 200 million Yahoo accounts have been released onto the dark web (black market) to the highest bidder.

Common issues with data being released is the common phishing and malware attacks via emails. Consumers of the older generation are the types of users that hackers rely on. With them clicking on a link starts the attack of their data being breached. It’s expected that around 16% of people will click on a link they should not in a phishing email.

The corporate companies cannot put in any protection on human error but do their upmost to protect the user by implementing certain protocols within the background in the functionality of the emails. This is behind the user interface which we see in our everyday life. So does it really comes down to the user?

Mr Sjouwerman founder of KnowBe4 says: “There will always be malware and phishing attacks that make it through the filters, and the human in that scenario can be the last line of defence.” (KnowBe4 are a training programmes who try to lessen the chance users will mis-click and leave a company open to a data breach or ransomware attack)

This experience will help older generations to understand. “If you bring it home to them, show them how a wrong click can affect their finances, they suddenly see the light and they stop clicking on the bad links”.

Finally to conclude protection of potential phishing emails and malware attacks are to look for certain markers that can betray a phishing email. Some common markers include receiving an email at an unusual time of day, having an odd subject lines and strangely formal language.